Too soon, the night came to an end, and the crowd whittled down to Clare, Dylan, and David. By the time Dylan asked her if she was ready to leave, Clare was exhausted. Mentally, emotionally, physically. Still, she couldn’t wait to have more time with him alone.
David locked the doors to the gallery and kissed Clare, thanking her and asking when her next set would be ready. Then, they heard a knock at the door.
“Someone probably forgot something,” David said and left to answer the door.
Dylan smiled at Clare and her butterflies woke. “Thanks for everything,” she said, reaching for his hands. “I really couldn’t have done this without you. Especially since you got me the camera.”
“My pleasure,” he said.
Clare stared at his perfect face. Say it, she begged with her eyes. Say it.
If he wasn’t going to say it, she had to. She remembered her dialogue and squeezed his hands, then started her speech, “Hey, do you think maybe—?”
“Excuse me. Clare? There’s a man at the door who says he knows you,” David interrupted.
Clare let go of Dylan’s hands, and the three of them headed to the door. When she saw him, she froze.
“Who is it?” Dylan asked.
She walked to the door and looked through the glass. “It’s Lucas.”
He waved and she unlocked the door.
Chapter 20
Dylan
Clare opened the door for Lucas. As soon as he was inside, he pulled her into a hug. “Hi, sugar,” he said.
Clare pulled back. “What are you doing here?”
“Your mom told me about your show, and I had to come. My flight took forever, though.” He turned to Dylan and David.
“Oh, um, this is David. He works at the gallery. And this is Dylan.” Clare’s big, green eyes looked right into Dylan’s.
Lucas reached out to shake his hand and said, “Yeah, I think we spoke on the phone.”
“We did. Nice to meet you.” Again, Dylan had forgotten about Lucas. Clare hadn’t mentioned him at all since returning to California, and he’d never really seemed real to Dylan to begin with, except the night when he spoke to him on the phone. The night he met Jenna.
As Clare watched Lucas, Dylan couldn’t believe he had kissed her only hours before. Or she had kissed him. He wasn’t sure. Either way, eventually they were kissing each other before she went into a fit of laughter.
Of all the women he’d kissed, he couldn’t remember any of them laughing afterward. But Clare had definitely broken the mold when it came to women Dylan kissed. She was beautiful and perfect, and incredibly sexy, and now that he had a taste of her, he didn’t know if he could keep his hands off—until Lucas walked in and Dylan remembered they weren’t each other’s to have.
He should have known it was bound to happen. Clare loved him. She had said so at church the other morning. He would have never in a million years guessed she would have kissed him in the alley. Still, he had to admit, he was glad she did.
Dylan had been tempted to scoop up Clare and bring her home with him. I’m such an asshole. The next day he was getting on a plane to visit his new girlfriend. I’m just as bad as Maggie.
Neither of them was available, which became painfully clear watching her with Lucas. Lucas was a good-looking guy, shorter than Dylan, rougher-looking. He and Clare suited each other. If they stood in a crowded room, they looked like the two people you would assume would match up. It wasn’t how they dressed or how attractive they were, it was more of a look they had. As if they needed each other to be whole.
As Lucas relayed details of his flight, Dylan decided to split. Clare looked freaked out enough, and he didn’t want to make things difficult for her. Not to mention he had an early flight to see Jenna.
“Lucas, it was nice meeting you, but I’m going to call a cab and head out.” He turned to Clare. “Want me to call you a ride too?” He wasn’t sure Clare wanted Lucas to know they had come together.
“Thanks. That would be great,” Clare said. She turned to Lucas. “I need a minute with Dylan, okay?” Lucas nodded, and Clare followed Dylan outside.
Clare shut the door behind them. “I had no idea he was coming. I haven’t spoken to him in weeks.”
“You don’t have to explain to me,” he said. He thought it odd they hadn’t spoken but didn’t have the energy to ask.
“Thank you for everything tonight. The gallery…the alley.” She blushed. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything. Go be with your fiancé. I have an early flight anyway,” Dylan said, reminding her he had someone else too.
“Lucas and I—”
Dylan didn’t have it in him to listen to the love story of Clare and Lucas. “Please,” he said. “I can’t. Not tonight. We’ll talk when I get back, all right?”
“Promise?”
“Promise,” he said. Clare hugged him, and Dylan didn’t want to let her go. He whispered in her ear, “It’s probably a good thing he showed up.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Clare whispered back. “But he did.”
Clare went back inside to Lucas while Dylan called for cabs. David joined him outside.
“So who’s Lucas?” David asked.
“Her fiancé from Nebraska.”
“I would have never guessed.”
Dylan squinted. “What do you mean?”
“She doesn’t wear a ring. Look.”
They looked through the window into the gallery where Lucas and Clare stood. “They aren’t touching. If you hadn’t seen your fiancé in weeks, wouldn’t you be a little more touchy?”
Dylan watched them. Something about the situation did seem off. “They are from Nebraska,” he said. “Maybe they do things differently there.” It was a dumb thing to say, but he didn’t feel like analyzing Clare and Lucas.
Finally, the first cab came. Dylan offered it to Clare and Lucas, but they wanted to stay to continue looking at the photos. Dylan slid in and directed the cab driver to Clare’s, where he got into his car and drove home. Images of Clare’s eyes looking at him in the alley, the way his lips felt on her skin, bombarded Dylan as he drove. He stopped himself from the thoughts and vowed not to think of Clare.
Instead, he thought about Jenna. When he got home, he called her, but there was no answer. He wished he was in New York—for Alex, for Jenna, to see Steve, to be away from Clare and Lucas. He left her a message. “Hey, beautiful. I’m lying in bed thinking about you. I can’t wait to see you tomorrow.” Then he put down his phone and tried to sleep. Moving on, he thought. I’m supposed to be moving on.
***
Clare
Clare opened the door for Lucas and showed him in. Angelica ran to him and rubbed up against his legs.
“Jelly Bells,” Lucas said, scooping her up and nuzzling her fur with his cheek. “I missed you.” Angelica was a gift from Lucas for her twenty-first birthday.
“Well, this is it,” Clare said, holding out her arms to present her apartment.
Lucas walked around in a circle. “It’s nice.” He stopped at the picture of Dylan on the mantle and studied it without comment.
“How long are you staying?” Clare asked.
“Until Tuesday. If that’s okay, I mean. I could sleep on your couch or get a hotel, whatever you want.”
Gosh, he was so darned sweet and so handsome, and Clare hated that she wanted to touch him. “No, stay here. Don’t be silly.” She couldn’t imagine Lucas alone at some hotel in the city. “I can’t believe you’re here.”
“Are you kidding? When your mama told me about your show, I knew I had to come. And I wanted to talk to you too.”
Angelica jumped out of Lucas’s arms, and Clare followed her to the kitchen to fill her food bowl. “Do you want anything to drink? Water, tea, whiskey?”
“Whiskey sounds great after that flight,” he said. “Now I know why it’s taken me twenty-nine years to get on a plane.”
Clare took out two glasses, filled them
with ice cubes and whiskey, and carried them to her couch. “I forgot that was your first time.” They sat and drank, keeping the bottle close as he made her laugh with his stories about the people sitting around him in the plane.
As Clare sat next to Lucas, listening to him talk, excited like a little boy, she caught a glimpse of the picture of Dylan that sat on her mantle. Kissing him was surreal, and wonderful, and new, and woke up her insides in a way she never thought could happen.
As she sat with Lucas, she thought about kissing him too. How sweet and comfortable it was. Before tonight, he was the only man she had ever kissed.
When Lucas finished his airplane stories, Clare poured them another glass, grateful she had not put herself on the work schedule for the next day. Maybe she would show Lucas the beach. Not her and Dylan’s beach, but a different beach.
“Lucas?” she asked. “Did Mama send you here to convince me to come back?”
“No. That’s not why I came. Before I left, though, she gave me a talking to. Said I better do whatever I could to get you back.”
Clare shook her head. “That sounds like her. She can’t accept this.”
“I don’t think Andrea’s trying to stop you from living your life. All that crap about love in the small town, that’s really her saying she wants you near for her own selfish purposes.”
“Maybe.” Whatever. Either way it annoyed Clare.
“Listen,” Lucas continued, “I want to apologize.”
“Oh, Lucas, for what? You didn’t do anything.”
“For the way I left things. I was mean and I ran off, and I didn’t have a chance to say good-bye.” She saw the pain in his eyes.
“I couldn’t bear to say good-bye to you, anyway,” she said.
“I’d love to sit here and tell you that you shocked me or I was surprised when you broke up with me, but really…I wasn’t, Clare.”
She put her glass down and faced him. He sat up and leaned on his knees. “I knew. I knew the moment you told me you wanted to take the job out here that I had lost you. You may not have known it yet, but I did.”
Clare gulped and watched his profile, one she knew by heart from sleeping next to him all those years. “There’s always someone in town who has to get out. You can spot them right away. Someone whose star shines brighter than Cliffville. That was you, Clare. That’s what made me fall in love with you, and that’s what took you away.”
Clare’s eyes teared and she sighed. “Luke…”
“Seeing you tonight through that glass door, you looked so beautiful. So grown-up. So different. Comfortable, like you belonged. It made me happy and sad at the same time. And your photos, sugar? They were amazing. They honored home like nothing I’d ever seen. But as I looked at them, I knew it was your way of saying good-bye. Of letting go of us.”
Clare pouted and felt a tear fall down her cheek. “I never meant to hurt anyone…”
“I know. We know. Don’t cry, please. I don’t want you to cry. This is your special night.” He reached up and wiped her tear away with his thumb.
“You make it hard to leave, Luke. You make me want to pack up Angelica and run right home so I can hide in your bed and snuggle in your arms, knowing you’ll take care of me.”
“But that wouldn’t be the right thing for you,” he said.
“I miss you so much. You know everything about me. Nobody here knows me like you do.”
“What about Dylan?” Lucas asked.
At the mention of his name, Clare shifted uncomfortably. “Not even Dylan.”
“It’s obvious he cares about you,” Lucas said before taking a sip of his whiskey.
“I care about him too. He’s been my best friend. Here, at least.”
An image of the alley, her hands gripping Dylan’s hair, flashed through her mind. She quickly dismissed it. Dylan would be hopping on a plane tomorrow to go see his “beautiful” Jenna. “I don’t want to talk about Dylan.”
Clare took their empty glasses and the bottle of whiskey back to the kitchen. It was after one, and the stress of the day had worn on her. Clare looked at Lucas from the kitchen, petting the cat, wearing one of the shirts she’d bought him for his birthday, and she wanted him, the comfort of him, and his warmth.
She wanted something to erase the image of Dylan in the alley, of Dylan and Jenna at the premiere looking so happy. He’d kissed her, and now he was leaving to spend the next few nights with his girlfriend. She wanted to spend the night in bed with someone too.
“Lucas?” she asked from the kitchen.
“Yup?”
“Would it be awful of me to ask you to sleep with me tonight?”
Lucas walked around and stood behind her, then wrapped her in his arms. “What do you mean?” He kissed her neck, and she felt her insides warm.
“I mean,” she said, leaning her head back on his shoulder, “could you still say good-bye to me if I begged you to be with me tonight. One more night?”
“Like good-bye sex?” he asked, laughing into her neck.
She giggled. “Sort of. For fun. For love. For the past. For the future. For whatever. I want you tonight. I need you. Could you do it? For me? I know it’s not fair—”
“Hush, Clare. Can I do it? You’re kidding, right?” Lucas put his hands on her waist, twirled her around to face him, and kissed her.
She kissed away the image of Dylan and Jenna again. “I’m serious.” Then she pulled away. “One last time?”
He smiled down at her, and she could have been seventeen again, in his pickup truck in the middle of a cornfield. Everything inside of her woke up, her California tension chased away by her Nebraska comfort.
As she made love to Lucas that night, Clare didn’t think about Dylan, not much, anyway, and afterward, Lucas held her as she fell into a sound sleep, as he had so many times before.
Chapter 21
Alex
Alex’s major league debut, witnessed by Jenna and Steve on Friday night, and then Jenna, Steve, Penny, Scott, and Dominic on Saturday night, was gut-wrenching, mind-blowing, and life-altering.
On Friday night, he went one for three at the plate, with a base hit, a walk, and a sacrifice fly. After his first hit, the outfielder ran the ball to him. Alex rolled it in his hands, staring down at it. Now he had “one on the books.” On Saturday, he went one for four, with a double. He did well in the field too, making all the right plays, a couple of six-four-three double plays, and even tagged out a runner trying to steal second.
The coaches and the players cheered him on, impressed with his energy and his willingness to learn. Santiago himself texted Alex from his mother’s hospital room.
Hey, Rookie, you trying to take my job?
Alex vowed to save the text forever.
After Saturday’s game, Alex went out with some of the guys from the team and sat in awe of the talented, successful people surrounding him. He listened as they told stories of the major leagues, gossiped about the players he had worshipped forever, talked about their kids, their families, their lives.
Alex had never missed his Uncle Anthony as much as he did that weekend. He could almost picture him sitting in the stands, next to Jenna and Steve, smiling at Alex with a pencil and scorecard in his lap just as he’d done for every one of Alex’s games before he died.
For the first time in his life, Alex felt lucky. His dream had come true. He had people who supported him, who loved him. He’d done everything in life he’d set out to do. While he would have loved being in the majors for real, if he only had the weekend, then so be it.
Only one more game. As he messed with his keys to the building, he came down from his high. The adrenaline subsided, and his great night turned to a memory. Automatically, he walked to the sixth floor, knowing Jenna wouldn’t mind the late-hour visit.
Although he hadn’t really seen her after the games—the team had asked him to hang out—she’d texted and called him like crazy. She was as excited as he that he’d gotten the opportunity. She’d record
ed the games and watched every sport report for any mention of his name. When his favorite sportscaster on AM radio mentioned Alex’s name and declared him “promising,” Jenna called him in a tizzy. She was so damn adorable, he almost couldn’t stand it.
He didn’t want to wake her, so he used his key and tiptoed in. He sneaked into her room and stripped down into his boxers, and found the T-shirt she kept for him in her drawer. Then he used the bathroom, washed his hands and face, and looked at her, lying in bed sleeping.
The moonlight from the cracks in her blinds streamed into the room. She lay on her side, her hair hanging down over her shoulder and face. Glad he hadn’t woken her, he slipped under the covers and lay behind her, and then gently reached around to pull her hair away from her face. He smoothed it over her shoulder, appreciating the softness. He touched the shiny ends, careful not to wake her. He could tell by the scent that she had just washed it.
He bent his arm under his head and rested on it, trying to fall asleep. All he could do, though, was lie there, thinking, lucky and grateful and sad all at once. Tonight, he didn’t feel like moving. He felt still on the inside and outside.
Maybe this is what being calm is about. If he had a nickel for every time Jenna had told him to “calm down,” he’d be a millionaire.
Jenna must have heard him thinking about her, because she rolled toward him and opened her eyes.
“Hey, you,” she whispered. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” he answered.
“Then why aren’t you sleeping?” She covered her mouth and yawned.
“I can’t. Can I lie here with you?”
“Do you want to talk?”
“No. Sleep. I didn’t mean to wake you.” As they lay side by side, Jenna watching him with her deep brown eyes, with the moonlight bouncing off her shoulder, Alex felt it again. That pull.
“You’re sad,” she whispered. “I can see it.”
He shouldn’t have tried to hide it. “I missed my uncle tonight.”
Jenna put her hands under her cheek and watched him.
The Love Square Page 19